"Please tell me you can see in the dark, Lord Quietus."

  "I’m capable of many things, young Fearshaper."

  "You can’t, can you?"

  "A petty skill, too far beneath me."

  Vale sighed, as she waved her hands before her erratically in the darkness.

  In a second, they had been deprived of the clear, direct path that the academy had silently promised them.

  To enter into the room of descension that held the object of their Fear, and to draw it in, creating their Fearcore. Without the horror of hunting for a place to be immersed in it.

  The rooms now laid empty – plain white boxes suddenly deprived of the objects of Fear they had once held.

  When she finally reached the stairs. She was faced with a simple decision. To ascend, and join Caledon or…

  After much searching, she had finally found the main stairwell. She climbed for what seemed like an eternity.

  Finally reaching the basement.

  In truth, she was grateful for the dark, for she knew what lay before her.

  "I’m not surprised that you didn’t join Caledon in the courtyard."

  Vale remained silent.

  "You are braver than you give yourself credit for."

  She waved Quietus’ words aside.

  "What do you think happened all of a sudden? The academy’s infrastructure has been operational for who knows how long... What caused the blackout?"

  "I admit, it is difficult to say… Perhaps your brother, or that Semille fellow found a way to intervene with the academy’s defences?"

  Vale gritted her teeth at the thought of it. The next time she encountered Triol, there would be hell to pay. She clutched at her bone-white scepter in frustration.

  "Anyway, we need to find Pevir. Pevir! Where are you? Hmm that’s strange."

  "I say… didn’t you warn that archaeologist not to venture into the academy’s depths? How are you so sure that he’s here?"

  Vale rolled her eyes.

  "Please, Lord Quietus. You think he would be able to resist the allure of knowledge long lost? The only library we were able to find was down here. I bet that’s where he found that tome. Ah! I stepped on something!"

  Her guide let out a sigh. Vale fought down her nausea as she trudged forward. Quietus remained mercifully silent as she trudged onwards.

  Vale let out a yell. Before laying down in a thump.

  "Gravelords below! Are you sound of mind?"

  "You know just as well as I do, without the rooms of descension, there’s only one place where I can surround myself with death."

  "In truth, you have the right of it. But you aren’t running Vale. There were other places you could have chosen to cower. You could have joined Caledon above."

  Vale fought down her nausea as she seated herself in the darkness.

  The dead surrounded her. The elves that had run from the Floors of Dread.

  She hated to admit it, but pursuing Caledon and searching for Pevir had been a cowardly distraction.

  Possibilities she could so easily follow. To distract herself from the goal that laid before her.

  To descend.

  The inquisitive archaeologist most likely had his head buried in another book, too preoccupied to respond, or out of earshot. Under the academy guardian’s vigilance, there was hardly anything capable of endangering them. Pevir would be fine. She was just treating him as another excuse to run from her Fear.

  Vale sighed to herself, and whispered to her guide.

  "Thank you for your kindness."

  The two sat in silence. It must have been just as clear to Quietus that she had been avoiding her descent.

  "Hmmph who do you take me for? I had every confidence that you would embrace your Fear."

  Vale settled down in the dark, amongst the bones and grime. Her ears rung from the silence. No wind or ambient noise reached the bowels of the academy.

  Death hung in the air around her.

  "After all, you aren’t too different from that friend of yours"

  "Shiver?"

  "Indeed. She dives headfirst into danger, embracing it wholeheartedly."

  "Where I would run."

  "Incorrect. You might dally, dance around the problem yes, but it has always been a certainty that you would face it. You would not be here, were that not the case."

  "Were it not for those cursed nightmare pods that trapped me in the nightmare..."

  "Those pods are an aid. They trap you in your nightmare, prevent you from so easily fleeing. Yet I doubt, they would not have trapped you in the nightmare eternally. You made the decision to confront your past and acknowledge your Fear, Vale, even if they eased the difficulty of it. A luxury denied to you now."

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  "I had better get to it then. Tell me what to do."

  She could run no more. She was powerless as she was. She would not give her brother the satisfaction of being right about her.

  "To form your Fearcore, you need to take the object of your Fear within you. To grasp it to shape a vessel for your Alarum. Descending from Anhedonia is simple. The source of greatest adversity during the stage of trepidation is acknowledging your Fear. This you have achieved. Harness the death around you, bend it to your will, and shape a vessel from which your nightmares will spring."

  Vale exhaled, and began to reach out before her.

  "I must caution you, young Fearshaper. For there are consequences for losing yourself to the process. Take in too much…"

  "Half measures won’t do a thing against the Highlord of Death."

  "I respect your resolve. It is your decision. Whatever you decide, I will support you. We will face the consequences together."

  Vale gritted her teeth, as she focused, the death around her, so thinly veiled by darkness, suddenly revealed itself to her. It did so with sickly enthusiasm, just as it undoubtedly claimed its victims.

  But there were layers to death.

  The physicality of death hit her. The rot and decay that it invited. The grim visages of skeletons, or of corpses partially decomposed. Or for those most recently graced by it, like she had seen her mother – skin still warm to the touch but devoid of all life – sickening deception.

  The imagery of death was hard to shake for anyone. But it was such a shallow, superficial understanding of the nature of it.

  As her consciousness expanded, taking in the fallen elves all around her, tears began to run unbidden down her cheeks. Vale was slammed by a wave of despair, as the emotions of the departed reached her. Their hopes and dreams dashed, stolen from them against their will. A contradictory mixture of emotions. Where there was despair, she also sensed relief, for those without the courage to confront their end.

  I want to stop. But I can’t, this just isn’t enough.

  Her eyes widened as she impossibly caught a glimpse of her body, within the darkness surrounding her. She saw decaying limbs, her skin torn, revealing the muscle and veins within. The sickly gleam of ivory in parts, where flesh and muscle had decayed completely.

  Must I lose myself to death to kill father? Perhaps. More.

  She extended her consciousness further still, beyond the academy walls. Her breath caught.

  "Vale. I know that you felt it from the moment you entered this – what is it you elves say? “Feardamned” Archcity. It reeks of loss. It does not rival the Gravecities of my home, but you would be hard-pressed to find a place so smothered in death. I will not restrict you, but to take in more…"

  Vale’s grin gleamed in the dark, not so different from the skeletons that surrounded her.

  "What would that crazy orphan do, right?"

  In a blink, the streets of Anhedonia enveloped her. But they were empty no more, littered in bodies of young and old alike. Blood flowed over dark cobblestone and shone in the harsh silver light of the Archcity’s “suns”.

  She felt the agony of hundreds, thousands of elves whose lives were stolen from them.

  Their silent cries, deafening.

  Only she was left to witness them.

  It would have been so easy to turn away, but true to her guide’s words, she faced them.

  She grasped their sorrow and despair, and pulled with all she had.

  Drawing into herself the death of an Archcity.

  ---

  Vale lay silently on the academy floor. She had lost all sensation of time, but she knew for certain that her descension from Anhedonia was complete. She now stood as a Fearshaper in Trepidation.

  She felt nausea rise within her, as she could feel, sitting in the depths within her…

  A Fearcore.

  Forged from the object of her Fear, she had drawn in the death of an Archcity.

  The lingering souls whose lives had been stolen from them.

  Tears ran from her eyes, as she comprehended a glimpse of their suffering. She had little doubt now, as to the cause of it.

  They had been victims of her father’s rampage. The Rampage of Undeath.

  As she lay, she grieved, for she had changed. Death was a part of her now. She would never be able to remove the Fearcore that lay within her.

  She closed her eyes, and slowly stood to her feet.

  Then, she manifested her Phobia.

  Her eyes widened, for they passed over not a small scepter, but an elegant scythe. Wrought from bone.

  Its curved blade hung over her head, towering above her, bearing with it, the promise of her Fear.

  "Welcome to Trepidation, Vale."

  She dismissed it with a flick of her wrist. And she felt something, at the edges of her consciousness. That had settled within her. It was strange, for she knew, that if she uttered the words, she would bring her Fear into reality.

  Impose it upon the world, as Fearshapers so arrogantly did.

  Her very first invocation, born from her descent.

  [Soul restoration].

  Then, Vale coughed, and fell to the ground, as her exhaustion caught up with her.

  "You proved it to yourself. Do you think I would have accepted a lesser student?"

  "What are the consequences… of taking in so much, Lord Quietus?"

  She was met with silence.

  She let out a soft chuckle.

  "Perhaps I should have asked before descending."

  After another moment of silence, her guide finally responded.

  "The symptoms of your Fear will heighten. The hallucinations, the panic. You will be all the more sensitive and vulnerable to it. You will be more easily driven to Insanity."

  "Great! Everything I could ever wish for."

  "But. What you will be able to do with it… Fearshapers that fail to fully confront their Fears, to draw in as much as they can take, will never reach the heights that elves are truly capable of. Worry not, my young guide, for you your resilience has rewarded you with an excellent foundation. Besides, I’m the best teacher you could have asked for. Congratulations for your entry into Trepidation. You certainly are, a charge worthy of such a grand guide as I."

  Vale started as she realised that Quietus’ voice no longer originated from her shoulder, but from the darkness in front of her. A pair of small green lights winked into existence before her.

  Her guide walked forwards, and she let out a shrill scream which rebounded across the empty hallways around her.

  Lord Quietus Vingrave strode forwards, no longer confined to the form of a wishbone.

  A skeleton strode forwards…

  What is that… some form of rodent… a rat?

  The rat skeleton walked upright on two hind legs at it approached her.

  Bearing a small walking stick, the size of a toothpick wrought from ivory. Tiny green flames glowed in its eye sockets.

  "Ah! Get away you foul thing!"

  Vale scrambled away from it with a yelp.

  "I say! You descend and this is how I am received? How offensive!"

  Vale gaped at the distinguished Quietus Vingrave’s new form.

  "Lord Quietus? It’s you?"

  "Who else would it be!"

  "You’re…"

  The rodent struck a regal pose, holding a small walking stick in the air.

  "With each stage you descend, we reclaim more of our being. I permit you to revel in my brilliance, Vale Revenant."

  "-a rat!"

  "Impudence! Egregiously reductive!"

  Her eyebrow twitched, before Vale burst out into laughter.

  She gulped down her nausea and extended a hand towards him, flinching as cold bone came in contact with her skin. She gently placed Quietus on her shoulder, trying not to heave.

  Then, she walked onwards, in the direction of the library, where Pevir no doubt remained.

  Trying her best to ignore the sensation of death that now dwelt in the very core of her being.